[Quoting David M]: > Surely the possible and the potential or Plato's potentia > are hard to distinguish but feel free to try. There is some > death here though, because when the possible becomes > actual only one possible is actualised whilst all others are > withdrawn, but the process moves on to a new situation > (past/history) and a new set of possible futures from > which only one is selected (as long as you reject the many > worlds option of quantum theory which is I think is logical > but absurd).
Your epistemology, and possibly Pirsig's, seems to be constructed on the idea that an event cannot become actualized unless it is "possible-ized". That is, actual events are somehow selected from a check list of "possible" events and, while we experience both kinds, only the actual events become history. Does this approximately describe your theory? I can not accept the "reality" of such a check list, since possibility is neither actualized nor derived from the potentiality of Essence (DQ). Dmb has said "there is no reality outside of experience ...and 'the possible' is not real." I concur with his analysis. Possibilities are nothing more than conceptualized thoughts about "what might happen". We conjure up such thoughts based on the knowledge that, although something always happens, we cannot know how or which ones will. It's the individual's way of trying to fill in the missing information by anticipating what we don't know, by considering yet unknown and unreal events as "possibilities". I submit that a "template" for actualized reality doesn't require possibility any more than it requires multiple universes. My theory is that existence is "fixed' or complete rather than a sequence of events. The reason we experience the universe as an evolutionary process is that our "now" -- the moment of experience -- is an infinitesimal point in infinite reality. Space/time is the mode of human experience, but ultimate reality is not limited to this pinpoint perspective, nor is it differentiated into discreet objects coming into being as a series of events. To put it simply, we are all looking at the same reality with the same handicap: we are deprived of its Essence. What we are aware of is a relational "otherness" that we want for ourselves. This is our sense of Value. Bo once defined it as "the value of the S/O divide." What makes us different as individuals is that we each sense that Value differently, relative to ourselves. But since it represents the Value of Essence, the universe that we mentally construct from it is essentially the same for each of us. Thus, the mathematical and geometrical relations that govern the forms of experienced phenomena, provide an "actualized template" which is universal to its cognizant agents. This allows us to recognize objects as having identical properties and fashion them to our mutual needs, affording us the universal correspondence of individual experience that makes civilization possible. There is no "possibility" here; it is all "actuality". Even the freedom we have as autonomous beings to choose our values is relative to the absolute source. [DM]: > Your view is anti-freedom and deterministic, I reject it as not > in accord with experience. Causality, like probability and possibility, is a human construct stemming from our temporal perspective. Existence is a 'fait accompli', and the divisions and differentiations that we call experience are due to the limited perspective of man's organic sensibility. Thus we intellectualize the objective universe as "deterministic", but our subjective value choices are made freely and unbiased by the source. [DM]: > Do you not experience what you imagine? > Then how do you know you have imagined it? To avoid confusion over terminology, I use "awareness" for sensual, conceptual, valuistic, or imagined phenomena, and reserve "experience" for the cognizance of actual events or objects (of experience). If you will indulge me in that practice, I think it will spare us a great deal of misunderstanding. [DM]: > What is inner and outer is both a form of experience/awareness. > But there is no outer without ideas. Inner and outer are ideas. > Patterns exist as inner and outer to create levels that can be > divided into at least 4. I don't recognize this "inner-outer" formulation from Pirsig's writings. Where does it come from? And what's the distinction that you see between inner and outer? [Ham, previously]: > Knowledge of the possible is part of our intelligence > but not our experience. [DM]: > Experience less intelligence would be rather poor, > maybe a bit like being a rock. Awareness, as I use it, includes all proprietary consciousness -- feelings, desires, values, thoughts, intellection, etc., as well as the experience of concrete (actualized) existence. [DM] > Our awareness of what is possible clearly expands, > so as we get older there is often less DQ and less surprises. What is your point here? [DM]: > Remove the possible and the actual would never > change again or anything new emerge. As I said above, the notion of actuality evolving from possibility is a human construct. The cause of creation is not possibility but the absolute potentiality of the source [Essence -- or, if you insist, DQ]. This potentiality is not actualized as possibility but as existence. [DM]: > You are at the crossroads, left is possible, > so is right. Only one direction can become actual for you. No, I am free to move in either direction. But the direction I choose is a value choice, not a possibility. And it does not affect the universal template of existence. <snip> > DM: Is what you think actual or possible? I don't think possible; I think actual. If I had put my money down on last week's lottery, I wouldn't be thinking of a "possible" $300 million, I'd be thinking of an actual win. [DM]: > You're just an expert witness on SOM, I'm the judge > and jury mate! And this is a beauty competition, and > I get to decide who I take home, if other people prefer > ugly old SOM (she had her day though) so be it. Guess I won't be going home with you, then. But thanks for the compliment; I've never been called an "expert witness" before, even when I did jury duty. Best regards, Ham moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
